GROWING SUCKERS. 69 



its first introduction into England it sold for 3s. per pound, 

 but as its culture increased the price lessened, until it wag 

 sold at one-half this amount. 



The planters, who at first cultivated small patches, now 

 planted large fields of tobacco, and such was the greed for 

 gain that some planters gathered a second crop upon the same 

 field from the suckers left growing upon the parent stalk. 

 Tatham* says in regard to it : 



" It has been customary in former ages to rear an inferior 

 plant from the sucker which projects from the root after the 

 cutting of an early plant ; and thus a second crop has often 

 been obtained from the same field by one and the same course 

 of culture ; and although this scion is of a sufficient quality 

 for smoking, and might become preferred in the weaker 

 kinds of snuff, it has been (I think very properly) thought 

 eligible to prefer a prohibitory law, to a risk of imposition 

 by means of similitude. The practice of cultivating suckers 

 is on these accounts not only discountenanced as fraudulent, 

 but the constables are strictly enjoyned ex officio to make 

 diligent search, and to employ the posse commitatus in 

 destroying such crops ; a law indeed for which, to the credit 



DESTROYING SUCKERS. 



of the Virginians, there is seldom occasion ; yet some few 

 instances have occurred, within my day, where the consta- 

 bles have very honorably carried it into execution in a 



Essay on Tobacco, London, 1800. 



